Just A Language Divide?

I was an undergrad at UCNW (now Bangor University) between 1981-84.

When I arrived to study at Bangor in Oct 1981 I knew very little about Welsh politics or the battles over the Welsh language. I was aware that there was a struggle going on because the English media had of course reported on the Meibion Glyndwr firebombing campaign and I remember that an insulting letter had been published in (I think) the Daily Telegraph asserting that absolutely no-one spoke Welsh any longer, that the demands of Welsh language campaigners were fatuous nonsense and a manifestation of ‘extremist’ politics. A furious response was elicited from north Wales and I remembered that someone – a Council leader or Mayor or someone in some such position – had appeared on TV presenting his case in Welsh. There were a lot of Welsh teachers at my school in Somerset but nearly all of them were from south Wales and I can only think of one from the north who probably spoke Welsh.

When I went for my interview at Bangor I wandered around the town and was able to report back to everyone in Somerset that yes, they do speak Welsh, I heard it in every shop that I entered and it really was not a case of ‘we went in a pub where they were all speaking English but as soon as we went in they started speaking Welsh’. I also noticed the graffiti all over Top College screaming ‘English Go Home’ – there were slogans in Welsh as well, but obviously I didn’t know what they said. However I did manage to work out what the notices insisting on ‘Dim Smygu’ meant and my translation was confirmed when I heard Welsh people reiterating the instruction as ‘dim smocio’.

When I arrived at Bangor to live and study, the bad feeling between some Welsh speaking students and the rest of the college could not be missed. The student newspaper was reporting on a huge punch-up that had taken place the term previously, in which a student from south Wales had been chucked through a window in the Students Union by a group of students from north Wales. The man who had gone through the window had been trying to intervene in a dispute between a group of Welsh speaking students and English students. The man from south Wales had told the Welsh speakers ‘I’m Welsh too’ – he was informed that ‘You’re not fucking Welsh’ and was thrown through the window.

One of the halls of residence was a Welsh speaking hall and it was made quite clear that if non-Welsh speakers crossed the threshold we’d be thumped. In terms of student protests, all the action took place at the Welsh speaking hall – at one point the students conducted quite an impressive sit-in which lasted a long time. They were sustained by food and essentials being delivered to them through the upper floor windows by their mates who had set up a system using ropes and pulleys. From time to time groups of Welsh speaking students would tour the university and tear down every notice that was written in English.

After a while I learnt that there was rather more to what was going on than was made public. Rats! It’s ‘that woman’ (as Dafydd used to refer to me) again – she’s been digging…

I found out that students had applied to live in the Welsh hall because understandably they liked the idea of living in a Welsh speaking environment – but that the hall was dominated by a small group of complete bastards of whom all the other students were terrified and who were making their lives a misery. The bastards were alleged to be out of control and one of them – I think that they were all male – was seriously violent. The non-bastards lived in fear of being seen socialising with us. The Welsh students had their own Students Union – it was above the Belle Vue pub – and they would not set foot in our Students Union. The rule was enforced by a three line whip from the bastards and a kicking would be applied to anyone defying orders.

Years later I discovered that the Principal of UCNW, Sir Charles Evans – Dafydd and Gwynne’s mate, who was kind enough to allow so many people involved in the facilitating of a paedophile and sex trafficking gang to set up home in the college – was perceived to have handled the grievances of the Welsh speaking students so badly that his intransigence had made the situation much, much worse. Charles Evans had grown up in north Wales, was a Welsh speaker himself, went to Shrewsbury School and then to Oxford University. He had worked as a neurosurgeon in Liverpool (see post ‘A Bit More Paleontology’). Charles Evans was one of the 1953 conquering heroes of Everest – the leader of the Everest expedition was Lord John Hunt who worked for the security services and later became the Commander of Sandhurst (see post ‘The Discovery Of A Whole New Galaxy’) – and took the view that the best way of doing things was to do what you wanted and bloody well ensure that the rest of the world did what it was told. This no doubt stood him in very good stead when he was climbing mountains and it probably helped when he developed multiple sclerosis as well, but it wasn’t the best way of managing a university whilst employing some of your mates who were running a paedophile gang.

I have mentioned previously that in 1979 the problems at UCNW were so severe that Dafydd Wigley, the then MP for Caernarfon, demanded that Shirley Williams, then then Secretary of State for Education, hold an inquiry into the management of the college. It didn’t happen and the chaos and unhappiness continued. It would of course all have been brought to an end if anyone had blown the whistle on the paedophile gang which were supplying children to civil servants and politicians, some of which would soon hold office in Thatcher’s Gov’t. But no-one did because they were all so bloody compromised, Shirl and Dafydd Wigley included.

Not only did I find out that the Welsh speaking students were boycotting the English Students Union, but they were also refusing to use the Student Health Centre – the Health Centre which was run by Dr DGE Wood and employed Gwynne the lobotomist, who were facilitating the paedophile gang. By 1983/84, the Welsh students were going so apeshit about the Student Health Centre that they were demanding the sacking of DGE Wood. Wood was furious – his story was that they were ‘Welsh extremists’ and wanted him out because he didn’t speak Welsh. From what I know about matters north Wales, that is often the excuse used to demand someone’s removal when there is a rather bigger problem which no-one dares actually admit to. It can be used to remove someone honest who is in danger of uncovering a barrel of shite – but it is also used to remove someone causing serious problems who is enjoying the protection of the highest echelons and cannot be removed any other way. What if some of those Welsh students knew about the paedophile gang and Wood assisting Dafydd and Gwynne into forcing young women into prostitution? The issue between the Welsh students and the Student Health Centre COULDN’T have really been language – Gwynne, like Dafydd, was from north Wales, spoke Welsh and made a great pretence of defending all things and all people Welsh. The Student Health Centre nurse Liz Stables was from Anglesey and her first language was Welsh – she too staunchly defended everything Welsh. Things got so bad that the University dispatched Liz up to the Welsh Students Union in an attempt to get them to drop their opposition to Wood and tempt them into the Student Health Centre. They did not succumb.

Wood was completely shafting English students who did not know about Dafydd and Gwynne and their dreadful reputation. Whilst giving every pretence of being a sensible rather conservative old fashioned GP, Wood sent certain students whom he targeted into the hands of a brutal sex trafficking gang, at a time before the general public were ever aware that such practices existed in the UK. He then systematically wrecked the lives of anyone who dared complain or caught a glimpse of the enormity of the wrongdoing. Wood even arranged jobs abroad for some people to get them out of the way even when the idea of emigrating horrified them and they were barely coping with life in the UK. A student whom I knew at Bangor found out about the corruption in the North Wales Police – she and her house mate had been constantly threatened, harassed and stitched up by the drug squad and I suspect that they realised that this was part of something much bigger. She infuriated Wood because she refused to go to Australia to take up a job that he was attempting to coerce her into accepting. Her housemate left Bangor to take up a job in the US – which as I remember was something to do with Wood’s wife, who was a lecturer in the School of Plant Biology. I’d be most interested to find out whether those two women are still alive – or whether, like so many people who knew that something terrible was going on in north Wales at that time, they have been killed in car accidents/found dead of drug overdoses/not managed to survive heroic attempts of Top Doctors to save their lives but instead have succumbed to conditions which other people usually survive.

Wood’s victims were English because the sort of better educated Welsh speakers whose children went to Bangor to study would never have handed their own children over to Dafydd and Gwynne.

This was brought home to me a few years ago when someone whom I became friends with in my 40s told me that she had begun a degree in music at Bangor in 1981, but withdrew after a truly unhappy time. She was a Welsh speaker, had been terrorised by the intimidating bastards in the Welsh speaking hall, had alleged that Professor William Matthias the Great was trying it on with the students and she had ended up with serious depression. Her mum and dad looked after her at home on the grounds that under no circumstances was she going to see the psychiatrist at UCNW – Gwynne the lobotomist. His reputation was well-known in Wales – it was English people who were fed bollocks by Wood about Gwynne’s ‘considerable success’.

I have mentioned the very bad behaviour of a small number of Welsh speaking students. There were a small number of self-appointed leaders of the English speaking students who might like to explain a few things to the police even after all these years.

Fiona Woolmer, the Wimmin’s Officer, who bombarded female undergrads with shite that she believed was coming from a feminist perspective. Woolmer knew all about the St David’s laundry (see post ‘The BMA And It’s Ethics’) and it was Fiona who was producing the literature to give to female students with advice on how to obtain an abortion privately in Chester because abortions could not be obtained anywhere in north Wales on the NHS. She will have known that this was a result of the crazed, abusive local Top Doctors and she will have known about the bloody trade in local disadvantaged girls and women – including the victims of the paedophile gang – and in their babies. Unless she was completely daft she will also have understood the horror within the arrangement that women seeking an abortion on the NHS had to stay at the North Wales Hospital to be ‘assessed’ by Dafydd – although they would be denied an abortion anyway, because of the Top Doctors arrangement. Like me, Fiona must have realised that there was an issue of disappearing babies. Fiona didn’t utter a word about any of it.

Duncan Orme, the Welfare Officer – who the last I heard just a few years ago was the Financial Director for an NHS Trust in Staffordshire. Duncan was the first person apart from Brown whom I consulted about Gwynne the lobotomist. Duncan admitted that Gwynne was a disaster and he confirmed that there had been attempted suicides because of Williams’s conduct. When I did not back down and stated that I did not intend to withdraw my complaint Duncan told me that I would get a ‘bad name’ for myself if I didn’t keep quiet about this, crapped himself and fled.

Well Duncan, who do you think has ended up with a bad name now then? Someone who was targeted by a gang of paedophiles and by a miracle survived whilst many more of their victims were found dead, or a dipstick like you who is working in a senior capacity in the most disgraced region of the UK’s NHS, which has become a byword for patients dying as a result of the decisions taken by you and your colleagues?

Fran Tate. Tate became the Welfare Officer after I graduated and remained there for years. Fran also worked for the CAB when she was young – and I am told has returned there again now that she has retired. The CAB which included among its senior managers Lucille Hughes – Dafydd’s mistress, former Director of Gwynedd Social Services and facilitator of the paedophile gang. Tate ended up as Head of Student Services and spent many happy years conducting personal vendettas against people who had spilt the paedophiles’ pints – she came after me on two occasions (see post ‘Disability Support’).

Some years ago allegations flew after Tate was appointed to a job in the University for which she wasn’t qualified and couldn’t do, but for which she was paid an awful lot of money. I was told variously that she had dirt on the VC, dirt on the VC’s wife and dirt on a friend of the VC. No, I very much doubt that she did – all three of those people had spilt the paedophiles’ pints themselves and one of them ended up dying at the hands of the Top Doctors. Fran was a mate of Dafydd and Lucille’s network and that gets people a long way, including into the Lords. So how did Fran wangle a job if the most senior person in the University was not a paedophiles’ friend? Quite simply – the VC’s wife died and whilst she was dying, for many months Bangor University was run by the Senior PVC, the late Professor Fergus Lowe. Fungus could not be described as a paedophiles’ friend, because Fungus wasn’t anybody’s friend. However Fungus had overthrown Dafydd in the School of Psychology back in the 1980s and had implemented an equally tyrannical regime built on his knowledge of the paedophiles’ friends and their activities (see post ‘He’s Not The Messiah, He’s A Very Naughty Boy’). Fungus wasn’t as thick as many of those we know and love and he wasn’t a member of the Mafia of Drips either – he’ll have known everything about all of them and will have used it in every way that he could. Fran bagged the job that everybody knew that she shouldn’t have had whilst Fungus had his hands on the organs of government at Bangor.

Just clearing a few names Fran! My only regret is that Fungus died unexpectedly (yes, another toxic git who would have been in a position to do massive damage who pegged out just as the demands for a re-investigation into the North Wales Child Abuse Scandal were made in Parliament a few years ago) so never lived to read this blog. He certainly knew that I was planning to expose them all – it was well known that I thought that it would be entertaining to stand up in public on an occasion when the wonders of Fungus and the School of Psychology were being extolled and yell out ‘He’s Not The Messiah, He’s A Very Naughty Boy’ and detail his crimes. Before I left Bangor, on every occasion on which I was having coffee with a mate or even just chatting to someone around the University, I’d turn around and there would be Fungus standing right behind me listening in. It happened so frequently that it will not have been a coincidence. Oh well the old bugger’s dead, but all of those who toadied to him are still with us.

I suspect that Fungus and/or Dafydd hold the key to yet another north Wales mystery that I have pondered over for a long while. I have described on this blog previously how when I lived near Bethesda in the 1990s one of my neighbours, a young man in the RAF, announced his intentions to read medicine. This man was able but what really freaked Bethesda out was that he was quite mad and given to outbursts of violence. He kicked someone’s cat across the garden on the grounds that he didn’t like cats. He then acquired a pup but didn’t seem able to train it – as a result the pup wouldn’t do things like come when it was called or walk on a lead, so his way of dealing with this was to completely lose his rag and inflict uncontrolled violence on the pup. One one occasion he injured the pup so seriously that it nearly died and the vet threatened to prosecute the potential Top Doctor if there was a repeat performance. Some time after this his girlfriend left him, taking their baby and denied him access on the grounds that he had been violent to her and was a danger to their baby. Neighbours expressed serious concerns that one day this man might turn up in a hospital near them.

Despite all that I knew about the wrongdoing of the Top Doctors, I did not think that this would happen. I knew that this man had experienced some sort of breakdown whilst in the RAF – according to some sources as a result of some psychological experiments in which he had participated – and one only had to talk to him for about 10 minutes to realise that something was wrong. Then he told me that his first choice of medical school was Guys and Tommys. I knew that there was stiff competition for places at this institution – particularly for mature students – and I also knew that medical schools obsess about students with any sort of perceived mental health problem and were turning down applications from high performing students who had previously suffered from anorexia. I therefore presumed that a man who was identifiably mad with a history of violence would not slip through even the very inadequate net of the Top Doctors. Furthermore, he had taken a job at Ysbyty Gwynedd as a porter during a gap year to Experience Life In A Hospital. He certainly did – I was told that he was known to be having sex with a whole variety of people on the premises during working hours and indeed was being described to third parties as the porter who ‘shags anything that moves’.

So imagine my surprise when he greeted me one day and cheerily told me that he had been for his interview at Guys and Tommys, that he had had a brilliant time with them and that they had observed that he was ex-forces which was great by them. He was in!

As the jaws of the good burghers of Bethesda hit the floor, the budding Top Doctor departed for London. He kept his cottage near Bethesda and returned from time to time. I was told that he had experienced another breakdown – however he wasn’t kicked off the course and I wondered if perhaps someone might have actually done the right thing for once, looked after him and made a positive difference. A few years later I bumped into him in Bangor – he was dressed in the sort of gear that Chris Eubank wears, which is a matter of personal choice but was a bit unusual for Bangor High Street. He told me that he had qualified, worked for a while – and had now been given a five year contract with the North West Wales NHS Trust as a psychiatrist in the Hergest Unit! He explained that the Trust had great problems attracting British graduates, so they snapped him up immediately.

About a year later I had yet another massive battle with the Hergest Unit, the one which culminated in the Hergest Unit trying to frame me for ‘threatening to kill Alun Davies’. I was told that this man had been appointed as my doctor. I didn’t actually mention all that I knew about him, I just told the Hergest Unit that he was my former neighbour, I had known him personally for a number of years and that it would be totally inappropriate for him to be my doctor. I was simply told that he was my doctor and that was that. At the same time, the Hergest Unit appointed a healthcare assistant who was actually one of the students whom I was teaching in the local FE college in Bangor as one of the staff on the ward to which I had been admitted. According to the Hergest Unit there was not a problem with that either. I got off lightly – I was told by one Hergest patient that her named Angel had been at school with her and had bullied her throughout their time there and continued with very similar conduct when in post at the Hergest.

As part of my complaint about the numerous incidents of gross misconduct on the part of the NW Wales NHS Trust at that time, I made representation to the GMC about my former neighbour and gave them the reasons why he was unfit to practice and the many examples of unacceptable conduct that had been evident on his part whilst I was in the Hergest Unit, yet alone for the many previous years throughout which I’d known him. I received a letter from the GMC telling me that they would not be investigating my complaint against him further – the Top Doctor himself had chosen not to comment in response to my complaint, but Keith Thomson, the CEO of the NW Wales NHS Trust, had written to the GMC explaining that there were no concerns about this man’s conduct and that I had made ‘outrageous allegations’ about his staff.

Some two years later I was told that the Top Doctor had carried out such a violent attack on his wife that she had been sectioned as a consequence of her own distress and that his two children had been taken into care as a result of serious neglect. Neighbours alleged that he had terrorised and controlled his wife, not allowing her to leave the house or to speak to anyone.

I have previously not named this Top Doctor, because I accept that he had very big problems of his own – however, that lot just won’t come clean and we are still hearing how all the NHS needs is a few more billion and what a problem the bastard patients are who are all violent/old/obese/miss their appointments.

So would anyone like to explain how Dr Andy Jones ever gained a place at Guys and Tommys, qualified and then worked for a number of years at Ysbyty Gwynedd? Perhaps the hospital chaplain the Rev Wynne Roberts could shed some light on this – Wynne was a friend of Andy’s, knew much of what I have written about here and also knew that patients at the Hergest Unit were being abused. That’s Wynne the hospital chaplain who was sacked from his previous position as a Church in Wales vicar after having an extra-marital affair with a parishioner, who sits on Mental Health Tribunals as well as on various service users and carers committees in north Wales and was or is a member of the Ethics Committee for the School of Healthcare Sciences at Bangor University (see post ‘Music Therapy Anyone?’).

Outrageous appointments and behaviour rather than outrageous allegations I think Thomson.

The reason that I always wondered whether Fungus or Dafydd were involved with the inexplicable acceptance of Andy Jones as a student at Guys and Tommys was that the only connection that Andy had with the healthcare or academic world was his brother, who had at some point been associated with the School of Psychology at Bangor. I was told in about 1990 that Andy’s brother ‘was a psychologist at Bangor University’ and that Andy was both envious of and felt overshadowed by him. Andy’s brother would definitely have known Fungus if he’d been working in the School of Psychology at that time and if he’d been there since just two years or so earlier he’d definitely have known Dafydd as well – Andy’s family were from Anglesey which was Dafydd’s domain, so they may well have known Dafydd anyway. North Wales heaved with people who seemed to think that the best career move that they could make was to go and have a word with dear old Dafydd and toady like there was no tomorrow.

I think that this might have been the reason why Dafydd found me so hard to cope with after I failed to accept his generous offer of a place at Liverpool Medical School in return for dropping my complaint about him – Dafydd really freaked out on the phone after this and yelled at me ‘any NORMAL woman would never carry on like you, any NORMAL woman would have some respect’ – there were quite extensive guidelines given as to what any NORMAL woman does, but I wasn’t taking notes at the time so I didn’t catch all the criteria. I also regret that the name of the Professor at Liverpool with whom Dafydd claimed to be mates and who was going to get me the place if I dropped my complaint escaped me – he was definitely Professor Richard someone, but whereas I was usually ready for a good laugh when Dafydd got going I was so gobsmacked at the overt attempt at bribery that his surname didn’t register. I’m sure that one of the other corrupt Top Docs knows who the Chair of Serious Organised Crime at Liverpool was.

I note that Andy applied to a London medical school – the usual avenues of cronyism and nepotism for the families of paedophiles’ friends in north Wales was Cardiff or Liverpool. It is clear from this blog that Dafydd had plenty of contacts among corrupt Top Docs in London, but his old mate Jim Watson from the Maudsley later established a sex therapy empire at Guys and Tommys and then became Head of the Academic Department pf Psychiatry there – Watson didn’t retire until 2000, so he will have still been in post when Andy Jones was offered a place at Guys and Tommys and throughout Andy’s training (see post ‘A Galaxy Of Talent’).

The hopelessness of the support from the Top Doctors for students in distress at UCNW was evident a few months before the finals in early 1984 (or it might have been late in 1983) when a student hung himself in the male hall Emrys Evans. I stress the hopelessness of the support from the Top Doctors – although there were the paedophiles’ friends on the loose within UCNW, the college was actually an incredibly friendly institution and the students were a nice lot, as were many staff. The problem was the people who were being to paid to look after the welfare of the students. People were horrified when the news got out that someone had been found hanging in Emrys Evans – it was said that one of the cleaners had found him. It transpired that it was one of the Welsh speaking students from the seriously dysfunctional School of Agriculture – in which Mary Wynch had been working when Dafydd had unlawfully arrested and banged her up in the North Wales Hospital and which was ruled over by the dreadful J.B. Owen from who students were fleeing (see post ‘Not Seen Since The 80s – Carwyn’).

None of us knew anything about the dead student at all. Well he’d been prevented from getting to know any of us by the regime ruled over by Big Bastard from the Welsh speaking hall – who I seem to remember was an agric himself – and he wasn’t going to risk encountering Gwynne and Dafydd even if they did speak the same language. The warden of Emrys Evans was Tony Jones who had links to some of the corrupt police officers in the North Wales Police and who got on very well with some of the students but made the lives of others such a misery that they lived in fear of him. I really do wonder what was happening to that student to cause him to hang himself.

There were other shenanigans that I have touched on previously going on in the English Students Union which were widely known about – the Irish student Aidan who had links with the IRSP (Irish Republican Socialist Party) and was doing a roaring trade in copies of ‘The Starry Plough’; the scandal involving the NUS President who nicked all the funds and was booted out; the man called Martyn who led the Gay Rights Soc – the Gay Rights Society was particularly active at Bangor and Martyn seemed to do very well campaigning on a UK-wide level; and the Bangor student who got beaten up at the NUS conference because he supported the SDP. The madness prevailing in the Students Union at Bangor must have been known about by the NUS exec at a national level – Sue Slipman from Lampeter had been the Communist President of the NUS a few years previously and had then joined Dr Death in the SDP in 1981, she’ll have known something about it. The Sue Slipman who became tangled up with the NCCL during its paedophiles’ rights years and went on to a glorious career Chairing NHS Trusts (see post ‘The Cradle Of Filth’). The dreadful Phil Woolas, a twat of the highest order, NUS President 1984-86- and later the Blairite Minister for Immigration who ended up leaving politics under a cloud – will have known about some of the action at Bangor as well.

Whilst I was a student I was told by a local Welsh speaker that most of the students in the Welsh speaking hall ended up as teachers in Gwynedd or working for Gwynedd County Council because they refused to work through the medium of English – those were really the only professional jobs which existed in which one would never have to speak English. When I was older I met a few such people who had worked for Gwynedd County Council – after a few years they were leaving in distress, some of them having taken extended periods of sick leave for serious work related stress. The name Dafydd Iwan was mentioned to me a number of times in terms of the poisonous regime which he was alleged to have cultivated in his capacity as the leader of Gwynedd County Council and who was ruthlessly hounding people who were not members of his clique.

Dafydd Iwan did of course write a tribute song for Dr Dafydd Alun Jones – on the grounds that Dafydd was a Welsh hero and leading the field in PTSD work. Dafydd only started claiming to be a PTSD expert relatively late in his career – it pretty much coincided with the demands for an inquiry into the suspected paedophile ring which was thought to be operating in the children’s homes run by Gwynedd and Clwyd Councils.

Another ditty from the pen of Dafydd Iwan is ‘Ciosg Talysarn’, a song about the telephone box in Talysarn which was reputed to be bugged by MI5. Which it might well have been – I imagine that north Wales was crawling with people working for MI5, after all there was Irish Republican activity in the Students Union at Bangor University. There was also a paedophile ring in operation in the region – a paedophile ring which it has now been admitted was being concealed by the security services because it involved a Minister in Thatcher’s Gov’t. I tell you which telephone box MI5 will have been bugging though Dafydd Iwan – it will have been the ciosg in Rachub. Because that was the one that I was using in my attempts to pursue my complaints about Dafydd and the paedophiles and for my calls to friends to give them the latest info that I’d dug up on Dafydd et al. It was my friends who were found dead and hounded out of jobs in academia and the media, not yours. You remained in Gwynedd County Council and pursued your record producing activities with SAIN, your brother Alun Ffred – a UCNW graduate himself -had a media career with HTV and S4C, took over as leader of the revamped Gwynedd County Council in 1996 after the old Gwynedd County Council conveniently disappeared upon the publication of the Jillings Report (see post ‘It’s A Piece Of Cake’) and then became an AM. Were you ever the subject of an attempt to frame you for serious offences? Er – no, you weren’t. Bryn Fon was, Dewi Prysor was and so were scores of the victims of the paedophile gang. But as long as that gang carried on giving Sir Peter Morrison et al access to the kids in care any mate of Dafydd Alun Jones’s was untouchable.

Now you tell me who fell foul of the security services – because it really doesn’t look as though it was you or Lucille Hughes…

My post ‘Are You Local?’ described how children from the Ty’r Felin children’s home in Bangor – run by Gwynedd County Council – were trafficked to various locations, including to Dolphin Square in London. The girls were taken to locations on the doorstep of Ty’r Felin what with there being a greater demand for the sexual services of under-aged girls than boys – a favourite location was The Octagon, a rather dodgy nightclub that opened in Bangor in the summer of 1984. There was an opening night with a celeb in attendance. Was it Dafydd Iwan, hired to give everyone a round of Yma O Hyd? Er, no. The star of the evening was Samantha Fox, singer of the unforgettable lyrics ‘Touch me/I Want To Feel Your Body Next To Mine’. The evening was advertised in the Bangor and Anglesey Mail and a photo was provided of an ageing local journo staring at Samantha’s assets. The message was quite clear – sexual services from teenagers available here…

I’m sure that Samantha Fox turned up to any venue who paid her to do so, but I wonder who had the idea of using her to let everyone know what would be on offer in that nightclub? I’m also wondering who Samantha Fox’s agent was and who among the paedophiles’ friends might have known him/her.

The wimmin from the Rape Crisis group protested outside – but made no attempt to blow the whistle on the kids in care selling sex inside once the place was up and running. Well how could they – the funding for their group almost certainly came from Gwynedd County Council and Gwynedd Health Authority, Samantha Fox and the paedophile gang were their bread and butter.

The Octagon acquired a terrible reputation within months – drugs were sold on an industrial scale and a student was raped outside. The place soon became a no-go zone for students because of the grad bashing that was happening there. It was universally known as a pick-up joint in which very young girls were available. There were constant demands from local people for the place to be closed down. But for some reason the police, the magistrates and the Council just wouldn’t do it…

Welsh and English speakers alike, the people wrecking their lives were Dafydd and the paedophiles’ friends – and of course their protectors troughing away in the Commons and the Lords and latterly the Senedd. They’ve screwed everyone for years.

Author: Sally Baker

I am a writer and a sociologist, originally from Somerset, but I’ve been based in Wales for most of my life. I had my first encounter with a mental health professional in 1984 at the age of 21. My GP described this man to my then partner – who also became a sociologist – as someone who had experienced ‘considerable success’. My meeting with this psychiatrist was a disaster and we attempted to complain about his insensitivity and highly inappropriate behaviour. That was the first time we were threatened and pressurised to withdraw a complaint against a mental health professional. This man is long dead – he was a retired psychiatrist from the North Wales Hospital Denbigh, T. Gwynne Williams, who was working shifts in the student health centre at University College of North Wales (now Bangor University). We discovered years later that this ‘successful man’ was notorious – he had been an enthusiastic lobotomist…

23 thoughts on “Just A Language Divide?”

UCNW Students Union and Dafydd Alun Jones were not the only people in north Wales who had links with Irish Republican activists. There was a woman who lived in Bethesda known as ‘Irish Christine’ who was an active supporter of the IRA. I only found out about this when she attempted to persuade a psych patient from Ysbyty Gwynedd to have a relationship with her – his wife had left him and he was recommended to go to a singles club in Menai Bridge called the Solo Club by I think someone from the Arfon Community Mental Health Team. I know of two other psych patients who were also encouraged to go to the Solo Club by mental health staff. I always imagined that the Solo Club would be peopled by retired butchers from Angelesey and widows looking for company but I heard otherwise from this man. His description of the Solo Club was entertaining but worrying. According to this man, men vastly outnumbered women and the men were rather predatory. So it seems were the women. I was told that Irish Christine ‘grabbed me and snogged me and it was terrible’. Irish Christine told him that he’d make a good stepfather for her son (who had quite serious behavioural problems) – I bet she did, the man whose face she’d snogged off was single and affluent and desperate for a partner. However desperate he was he ran a mile when over the next few days he discovered that Irish Christine had some interesting ideas and contacts.

It is not Irish Christine’s support for the IRA that I am concerned with – after all, some sort of peace has now been achieved in N Ireland, although everybody in the know maintains that a major part of the deal that Blair thrashed out involved not delving into the Kincora Boy’s home, where kids were abused by civil servants, members of the British Army and others. I am interested in Irish Christine because she was one of a group of very predatory wimmin who lived in Bethesda in the late 80s/90s who seriously screwed over some vulnerable people with the help of the paedophiles’ friends. Two of the other wimmin in the group were a Mary Vernon and a woman called Olga, whose surname was Russian – something like Petrov.

They were mates with a woman who did form a relationship with the man who ran away from Irish Christine – from what I saw I suspect that they had all cooked up the plan together. Their mate moved in with the psych patient and he financially supported her and her children from a previous marriage – until the dosh ran out, whereupon she announced that she didn’t want him around anymore. She had just given birth to his baby and Olga and Mary perpetuated the myth that he dumped her with a new baby. What really happened – as Mary and Olga know – is that she desperately wanted another baby and they all set out to secure the attentions of the man who was targeted. He was left with every impression that he had acquired a long term partner and a new family. It all came to an end when the baby was a few days old and his money had run out. He ended up in the psych ward at Ysbyty Gwynedd and was then told that he was a risk to the baby and was not to be given access. The mother of the baby received full support in this allegation from Jo Bott, a former police officer who was by then working for the child protection services. Bethesda GPs surgery knew what had happened and so did the Arfon Community Mental Health Team. They might not have known that Olga had approached the father of the baby when she saw him in Bethesda and had demanded money from him. She didn’t get it – the man then received an approach from Mary Vernon who told him how lovely his son was but his mother could really do with some
money. The mother of the baby had spent approx 40k of this man’s money and had left him with nothing – half of Bethesda knew this even if Jo Bott and the wimmin were ignoring it.

There are further elements to this story. The young adult son of the mother of the baby had been caught on two occasions sexually abusing boys of approx 10 yrs old. Olga knew this, but I’m not sure if Mary and Christine did. The man who had been fleeced of money and baby told the GPs in Bethesda because he was so worried about this. Jo Bott also knew about the situation. I say the situation rather than the allegation – it was admitted by everyone that the young man had definitely abused the boys. The solution was for the GPs and Jo Bott to maintain that there was not a problem – the man who had been fleeced and his new partner then received a visit from Jo Bott who aggressively told his new partner to leave his former partner alone – yet she had not communicated in any way with the mother of the baby or
the Bethesda GPs.

The mother of the baby was then rehoused in a new North Wales Housing Association property in Bethesda – her pregnant teenaged daughter was given a new property next door on the same development. Then Olga also bagged a North Wales Housing Association property just around the corner! This was at a time when there was a waiting list a mile long…

I was told that a deal had been done. The mother of the baby had been told that if she agreed to prevent the father of the baby from seeing his baby, she and her daughter would both receive neighbouring houses in the village of their choice. It also seems that part of the deal was to ignore the real risk presented to children by the adult son of this woman and to construct the father of the baby and his new partner as the aggressors.

Lest anyone think that I’m just bellyaching on about a deeply unpleasant but very ancient injustice, the reason why I will not stop publicising what happened is because of the fate of one other person who knew the whole story – the father of the baby of the teenaged daughter of the woman who agreed to set her former partner up. He and his parents gained custody of his baby daughter after the teenager abandoned the baby and left him for another man. She was told by Gwynedd Social Services that if she simply attended the custody hearing she would be awarded custody of the daughter whom she had abandoned. She did not bother to attend the hearing. She went on to have two more babies who had to be removed after she physically injured them.

Was it happy ever after for this young man caught up with this monstrous gang once he and his parents gained custody of his daughter? No. CRASH! He was found dead a few months later. Hit by a lorry on a road near Bethesda when he was out walking one evening. No investigation.

I am not going to identify the children involved in all this – who are now adults – for obvious reasons.

But the following people know the full details behind this disgusting stitch-up of two fathers who were ruthlessly milked by a bunch of unscrupulous people – and one of those men did not survive:

North Wales Housing Association
Jo Bott
Gwynedd Social Services
Arfon Community Mental Health Team, particularly Slob Ingham – Keith Fearns will have been involved as well
Dr Paul Nickson and Dr Gareth Jones – the GPs directly told about the abuse of the children involved
Dr Nicky Heinersdorff knew the details and I suspect that Dr John Mithan did as well
The staff of the Hergest Unnit knew what had happened although I’m not sure whether they had been involved in the dirty deals behind the scenes
Councillor Dafydd Orwig was involved in securing the properties for the predators – he is dead now, but he will have been using the services of others to help him.

Mary Vernon and her daughter were also known to the mental health services in north Wales

Someone else knew what was going on as well – the solicitor who practised in Bethesda High Street in the early 1990s. He was called Huw but I can’t remember his surname. I witnessed the father of one of the babies tell Huw that the eldest son of his former partner was molesting children. Huw was given full details – he sat and shook his head and said that he knew of other ‘timebombs’ in Bethesda, but he really couldn’t do a thing.

I had heard about Huw before I witnessed this conversation. He had previously carried out some conveyancing for one of the men fleeced by this bunch of paedophiles’ friends – Huw took a very, very long time, a few sales fell through and when a sale was finally completed there were many thousands of pounds less left from the sale than the seller of the property expected.

As for the other time that I had heard Huw mentioned – it was Huw who was the Bethesda branch of the group of lawyers and Top Doctors who fleeced the people featured in my post ‘It’s All About Protecting Children’. The people whose mother died in the care of Warlingham Park Hospital – who were then sectioned themselves, accused of serious crimes and packed off to north Wales ‘where the lovely fresh air will make you both better’, after being fleeced of most of their inheritance and then sold a house in Bethesda which they had not seen in person. When they arrived in Bethesda they discovered that the house that they had purchased was a different, far more inferior house than the one that they were told that they were buying. Huw did the conveyancing.

So how did you get to know the criminal Top Doctors in south London then Huw? Wasn’t by any chance via a man called Dafydd was it?

Jo Bott and Huw – one of you is a former police officer and the other a lawyer. I trust that you do know how unlawful the deals that you were involved in were? From what I alone know there were two possible murders involved and the theft of many thousands of pounds…

I hear that there’s trouble at HMP Berwyn – the Daily Post are reporting on dirty protests and a roof top siege. You’ll both have a great time in there!

Two police investigations found no evidence of a paedophile ring in north Wales.

Ronnie Waterhouse admitted that there was a paedophile ring but only within north Wales. There was no evidence of the involvement of anyone outside of north Wales.

So how did all this lot miss what was happening in Bethesda then?

I don’t remember anyone coming up to interview any of us.

They knew that we were there. They were arresting us every few weeks…

A long time ago. Far away. The children who were stolen have been told that their parents were seriously mentally ill and couldn’t look after them. The people who were robbed of their money and property are destitute or dead – which just goes to show that they were mad and chaotic and couldn’t have looked after their children anyway.

The bodies of the disappeared are in the grounds of the North Wales Hospital.

It was all a very long time ago and nothing will be gained from pursuing old complaints.

Some of the people who did it all are still working in the welfare services in north Wales.

There is at present a young woman hiding in the countryside in north Wales. She had been sectioned at the Hergest Unit, told that she had paranoid schizophrenia and was forced to abort a baby that she wanted – on the grounds that she was too ill to look after it.

This young woman was certainly vulnerable but her problems really started when she was raped by three men. She reported the matter but the men were acquitted. Then the police prosecuted her for wasting police time. She was fined.

This young woman’s closest relatives and two of her friends all know what happened to her. They have dared not approach any authorities to back her up – she has a very able brother who pleaded with the police not to prosecute her after the three men were acquitted of raping her. The police ignored him. The young woman was not given access to a solicitor or to any medical help – although the world is now being told that she has paranoid schizophrenia..

No wonder she’s in hiding and everyone’s too bloody frightened to come forward.

The day after the Waterhouse Report was published, Geoff Lees, a social work lecturer at Coleg Menai, walked into his class and told them ‘One thing that will not be discussed today and never will be is the Waterhouse Report’. He never mentioned it again.

Geoff worked as a social worker in north Wales and sectioned patients in Denbigh. He is now the Director of Vale of Clwyd MIND.

Geoff’s colleague, social worker Jan Fletcher, did discuss the Waterhouse Report with her class. Jan admitted that she had taken children to the Ty’r Felin children’s home in Bangor and she thought that Nefyn Dodd was ‘a bit harsh’ with the children but she really had no idea of what was going on in that home, none at all.

Jan missed that fact that Nefyn Dodd forced children to lick his boots, beat them, raped them, forced them to work for free in local businesses and trafficked them to London for sex work. Jan must have been the only person who had doings with Ty’r Felin who didn’t know what was going on. I heard about it and I hadn’t even stepped inside the place – but I knew people who had.

Diane Underwood. Did a degree in psychology at Aston University, caused considerable problems for a number of other students whilst toadying to Sir Frederick Crawford’s regime.

Diane then popped up a few years later as a clinical psychologist at Bangor University! Once Brown and me were under fire from the paedophiles’ friends. Diane knew Brown from Aston – they’d both been on the same course…

Diane appears to have disappeared off the planet, like so many people who worked with Dafydd and the paedophile gang since I began writing this blog.

Sue Avery. Worked at mad Bridget Mason’s fertility clinic in London for years and was witness to a great deal of wrongdoing. Sue is now Director of the Birmingham Fertility Service. Sue is a Bangor graduate – she did zoology there back in the 80s. Sue will know about Dafydd and the paedophiles – the people who she has worked with since leaving Bangor had contacts in north Wales and all knew not to rat on Dafydd or the whole bloody medical establishment
would come crashing down.

No point the paedophiles’ friends trying to leave the country – the City of London airport has just been shut down. No flights going out at all.

The patients included a woman who had worked as a secretary at New Scotland Yard. One day her boss – a senior police officer – offered to give her a lift home. When they got to her house he forced himself inside and raped her. She ended up in Springfield and by the time that I met her was what could only be described as a nervous wreck and far too terrified to go home. She was having ‘therapy’ with a nurse called Wendy. Wendy was telling this lady that she wasn’t facing up to her problems and that she was going to be discharged whether she felt ready to leave or not. The police officer knew where his former secretary lived and she was frankly terrified. The rape had not been reported to the police and Springfield made no attempt to protect this lady from further intimidation or assault.

Another of Wendy’s therapy patients was a man called Alan. He had been admitted to Spingfield to dry out – he was an alcoholic and Spingfield told him that as far as they could see, he was drinking because he had a very severe depressive illness. Alan dried out and one day went out for lunch to a place in Wimbledon with me and another patient (none of us were sectioned). When we returned Wendy walked up to him and demanded to know how much he’d drunk. He told her that he hadn’t drunk anything. He hadn’t – I was with him all the time and no-one had anything alcoholic. Wendy accused him of lying. Alan become very upset and walked away on the assumption that if he – and indeed I and the other person who’d gone out to lunch with him – were not going to be believed then there wasn’t much point speaking to dear old Wendy. Wendy approached him about 30 mins later announcing her desire to hold a therapy session. Alan stated that he really did not feel like talking to her at that time. Later that afternoon Wendy told him that he would be discharged – on the grounds that he had been ‘very rude’ to her and that she was upset. He had been offered no help for his obvious serious depression. I went to visit him after he was discharged. He was so depressed that he was virtually catatonic – he could barely move and couldn’t talk.

Alan is someone else who knew what was happening to me at the hands of Dafydd and the paedophiles’ friends – when I was in Springfield the paedophiles’ friends were repeatedly perjuring themselves in an attempt to have me imprisoned. The charges against me were changing on an almost daily basis and because I had made friends with Alan he knew exactly what was going on. By the time that I was in Springfield, there had been articles in the UK press about the abuse of children in north Wales and there were demands for a police investigation into allegations of a paedophile ring involving politicians. Thatch had recently resigned and lost the leadership battle – her campaign had been led by Sir Peter Morrison, who was abusing kids in care in north Wales. Records in my possession written by the Top Doctors at the time show that they were in contact with Dafydd and Lucille Hughes and were colluding with them – although they noted that Dafydd was sexually exploiting patients.

Is Alan Townend still alive Wendy? Or is he yet another person who witnessed a few terrible things who has since been found dead?

Alan also knew about the lady who had been raped by the senior officer in New Scotland Yard – he was horrified.

Alan and I also made friends with a lady on Daffodil Ward who had been forced into a marriage with a man whom she had never met. He was violent and had been threatening to kill her. He told her that he would gain custody of the children. He had gone to their GP, told the GP that he thought that she was mentally ill and she had been taken to Springfield after being loaded into the car and told that she was going shopping. She was sectioned and not allowed to leave the hospital. Her husband had got custody of the kids because she was now mad and sectioned. He came to see her most evenings – and threatened her. She would end up in tears and Wendy et al explained to everyone that this lady was crying because she missed her children. She was crying because she feared that her husband was going to kill her and tell everyone that she had killed herself.

Two other patients who were suicidal were discharged against their wishes. Alan Townend witnessed that as well and was rash enough to announce that it was ‘bloody disgusting’.

Daffodil Ward was an adult ward but there was a teenaged girl there who we were told was terminally ill as a result of a very rare neurodegenerative disease. Her condition caused her to drink compulsively – she would fill up on gallons of water or tea and then throw up. Absolutely no assistance was forthcoming from anyone. Another patient dared challenge a member of staff over this and was told that the girl was dying anyway and they didn’t need to be told how to do their job.

Every night at about 1 am the staff would lock us all in – although this was not a locked ward – and bugger off to socialise with their mates on another ward for a few hours. One of the patients on Daffodil Ward had murdered someone before being sent to Springfield.

St George’s had one of the finest academic depts of psychiatry in the UK! And there was a lawyer on site to ensure that patients’ rights were protected! Somehow the lawyer missed the lady who had been raped by an officer from Scotland Yard. Indeed the lawyer missed all of us, they never came near Daffodil Ward and I suspect that I was the only person in there who knew about the lawyer – because I worked at St George’s and had been exposed to the propaganda…

The ward manager was a vile Australian woman called Stephanie who would regularly emerge from the nurses office and walk through the ward at high speed shouting and swearing at all the patients as she went.

The junior doctor with responsibility for the ward was Dr Adrienne Key. She didn’t shout and swear at the patients like Stephanie – she just spent all her time in the nurses’ office, shut the door in patients faces if they tried to talk to her and if they still wouldn’t bugger off would call Stephanie who would come out and hurl abuse.

Adrienne now has a Harley Street practice and is Director of Eating Disorders at the Priory Group!

Adrienne – as well as giving your own statement to the police, perhaps you could also provide them with Wendy’s and Stephanie’s surnames in order that they may be traced to provide statements as well.

St Georges and Springfield Hospitals were concealing a paedophile ring that was operating in their catchment area which had links to other gangs in the UK and across Europe.

One of the Councils that was served by St George’s/Springfield Hospitals was Wansdworth. Another Council was Merton. Between 1986-94, one of the Merton Councillors was a lady called Theresa May. She was Chairman of Education and Deputy Group Leader. The Director of Education in the neighbouring Council of Wandsworth was a paedophile who was a visitor to Elm Guest House (see post ‘Always On The Side Of The Children’).

London City airport currently closed Theresa. Just in case you and Philip were thinking of popping abroad for a quick break at short notice.

Regarding the predatory woman mentioned in the earlier comments who fleeced one man, stole his child and who’s daughter’s partner who knew the full details as well as who assisted her in all this was found dead – she grew up in Llanfairfechan and her extended family lived there. Llanfairfechan is quite a hot spot for the paedophiles’ friends – Bryn y Neuadd Hospital is located there. Today Bryn y Neuadd is a secure forensic psychiatric unit but for decades it was the long stay institution for people with learning disabilities. There were many connections between the staff of that hospital and other NHS/social services staff. Some mental health staff live in LLanfairfechan – Slob Ingham for example. The predatory woman’s first partner – the father of the young man who was abusing children – came from Bethesda. Which is where Dafydd originated.

Cledwyn Williams was the Social Services senior manager responsible for the learning disability service, 1983-96. The father of the baby who knew about the serious criminality was found dead in approx 1995. Just as the demands for a public inquiry into the North Wales Child Abuse Scandal had reached fever pitch.

Cledwyn is Vice-Chair of Dafydd’s charity CAIS!

Do you know anything about the death of that young man from Tregarth Cledwyn?

I can remember the name of the young man who died Cledwyn and Dafydd – and the name of his little girl. I can remember the names of the predatory woman and her other children – as well as the name of the older boy who was abusing children himself. I can even remember the name of one of her sisters – the aggressive old bat who lived in Holyhead. And the name of the father of the older boy who was abusing children himself – and I know who that father remarried – and which political party she stood as a candidate for in two elections.

I can remember everything about them Dafydd. Taid and the whisky; the mother who died; the illiterate girl who became pregnant whilst she was still at school and who was forced to marry the boy who was responsible as soon as they were legally old enough for that to happen – although neither of them wanted to do that; the man who had a thing about beginning relationships with women with young children who then left them when the children reached puberty; the Angel who worked at Ysbyty Gwynedd who was related to them all…

Hey Dafydd – what about that other family, the family where the parents were killed in a car crash and the kids were just left to fend for themselves by dear old Gwynedd Social Services, so you decided to ‘take a special interest in’ one of the teenaged girls? Yep, I heard all about the trips in your car that she used to get for a treat a la Jimmy Savile…

Dafydd – what I can’t quite understand is that the man who had his child stolen by Aunty Betty’s extended network had his child stolen BEFORE you accused him of lying and he cheerily responded with ‘Yes I lied – and you murdered’.

So why was the baby stolen? OOOOOH – was it because of the policeman who beat him up and framed him for possession of class A drugs which resulted in him spending a year in Denbigh??? He was quite chatty and trusting wasn’t he – so he probably told the Angels all about hearing the prisoners in Risley Remand Centre screaming at night as the warders battered them.

Then there was the other patient of yours who shared a cell with the prisoner in Risley who committed suicide in front of him. He rang and rang for the warders but no-one came and he stayed in the cell with the body…That young man probably didn’t leave Denbigh alive did he? Particularly as he had been in care in Wrexham…

The predatory woman and Olga both sent their children to the Steiner School near Porthmadog which has now closed down. Neither of them had the money for the fees – the fees for the children of the predator were paid for by the man whom she later stuffed over in collaboration with Jo Bott, Gwynedd Social Services et al and Olga thrashed out a deal with the school in which she did some cleaning in return for a waiver on some or all (I’m not sure which) of the fees.

Some years later I became friendly with someone else whose children had gone to that Steiner school. She ended up taking them away when she found out that they were going to the house of another parent after school to play with their friends – the games involved them all getting naked with the (male) parent whose house they had been invited to.

I then got to know a young man who had been to that Steiner school from the age of six. He told me that when he was in his late teens, the woman who taught him at the Steiner school from the age of six had tried very hard to persuade him to have a sexual relationship with her – she was by then in her 60s. He was of course no longer six and he was just about an adult, but I’m not sure that when I’m in my 60s I’ll be trying to shag someone whom I taught when he was six. But who knows, I’m not in my 60s yet – the seventh decade certainly didn’t slow Dafydd down.

For many years Olga’s own partner was a man called Phil. Phil was known around Bethesda as ‘Phil Bastard’ or sometimes as ‘Philth’.

Olga – rather than colluding with a gang of paedophiles to fleece and screw over a vulnerable man, do you not think that it would have been more sensible to have grassed up Philth to the police in view of what he was doing?

Jo Bott – I presume that you and Gwynedd Social Services as well as the other paedophiles’ friends knew about Philth? Because the rest of us did.